The Right-Wing Revolution

American Prospect ^ | 10/7/04 | Reich

[pabianice]

Something to consider when reading Zogby and other anti-American "polls."

[Publius Valerius]

I think this is an interesting description of "right wing." I consider right wing to be ultra small-government individualists.

I'm looking around, and I don't see much of that. While there might be a "Republican Revolution," I'm not sure about right wing.

[lady lawyer]

The so-called "far right" that he talks about is still to the left of where the Democrats were in the 60's. The march to the left is the "revolution." We are simply not going along with it. America has always had more that is worth protecting that the other "western" democracies. Hence, we resist the march to the left, choosing instead freedom and sovereignty.

[Sam Cree]

bookmark

[RockinRight]

Not a bit of bias in that report...none at all...

< /sarcasm >

[Free Vulcan]

Mr. Reich arguments are a very selective collection of half-truths, logical leaps, and superficial analysis, with a predetermined conclusion based on liberal ideology.

[Falcon4.0]

So there you were. Sitting in your living room minding your own business when there came a knock on the door. It was your young snot nosed hippie neighbor. He came in and you'd thought you'd be hospitable. He lowly, but insistantly started squawking about what a bigot you were but you didn't get upset. Soon he began to rearrange the furniture and you held your tongue. Now he demands you leave because you don't fit into the decor and insists you were never invited in the first place.

[skeeter]

Hey Reich: BOO!

[Rokurota]

Same old stuff. Old lefties like Reich can't figure out why he isn't liked, so he theoroizes that it must be because a.) those darn meany righties lie and cheat so much and/or b.) "Middle-America" is just too stupid to get it.

[VNam68]

Bump

[dljordan]

It seems that it's the labels that are moving. I've made the point before that todays Republican party are the Democrats of thirty years ago.

[DSBull]

Robert B. Reich?

Isn't he the midget economist from the Clintoon administration...Clinton being the first president to nominate the most little people to high office.

The only thing I got out of this was in short(sorry)Democrats=stupid , republicans=evil, which seems to be the same old song...

Maybe the problem with the DUmmies is their leadership, which is populated with socialists...

[Melpomene]

With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, white southerners began their slow but steady march toward the Republican Party.

I've never understood this position. Wasn't the CRA passed because of Republicans? If so, why would a bunch of racist white southerners begin to flock to the Republican party?

[LTCJ]

It seems that it's the labels that are moving. I've made the point before that todays Republican party are the Democrats of thirty years ago.

True. I saw it charachterized somewhere on FR as many 'conservatives' being those who are perfectly satisfied with the drive to the left as long as we do it at the locally posted speed limit - as long as we're behind the wheel.

[counterpunch]

From reading some of the replies, it seems like it may not be understood that this is from an openly left-wing opinion oriented publication.

Anyways, I found the irony of this to be amusing:

Republican fat cats must be laughing all the way to the banks and ballot boxes. They pose as heartland Americans and rail against Ivy League stuffed shirts when they themselves graduated from the same institutions. George W. Bush, a president’s son, educated at prestigious Andover Academy, Yale, and Harvard Business School, plays at being a down-to-earth Texan. Republican leaders of congress curse haughty professionals when they themselves are mostly lawyers and bankers.

This pretty well sums up the two Democrat fat cats who are running for President and VP. And most of the Democrats in the Senate too. What the liberals don't seem to understand is that most of us have no contempt for those who are wealthy. We have contempt for sanctimonious hypocrites.

And now below, the simple mindedness of the liberal social engineer is exposed. They actually really do believe that wealth is zero-sum, that we might just "run out" of money if some people make too much!

Democrats believed in taxing the rich so there’d be money enough to give every American a decent chance to get ahead.

Unbelievable.



.

[Mogollon]

With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, white southerners began their slow but steady march toward the Republican Party.

The Republican party supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was members of the democRAT party such as Al Gore Sr., Ernest Fritz Hollings, (et. al) that voted against it.

[goldstategop]

I'm laughing. Robert Reichhhhhhhh knows full well the day of Big Government isn't over. No matter what President Clinton declared a couple of years ago. Its bigger than ever and Republicans were the ones who pushed through a new entitlement benefit. The GOP had adapted to the reality Americans don't want a revolution - they want to look to government as long as they don't pay too much for it. If there's a lurch to the right, I don't see it in the policies pursued by the federal government under George Walker Bush.

[schaketo]

A belligerent cowboy president who says he’s doing God’s work

Can someone find one example of GW stating he is "doing God's work"? And "belligerent" is a subjective view based on this writer's shorts being too tight. Beyond that, I imagine W likes the cowboy tag. I do.

[marron]

The writer is rather shallow. He doesn't understand the terms he is using. He doesn't understand the issues he is raising or the dynamic driving them.

most state governments are dominated by born-again bible-thumpers.

First, I would doubt this is true. Second, until a couple of decades ago, you would have found devout people in both parties. One party has steadily squeezed them out over recent years, and the other has received them by default.

And America’s radical conservatives are not nearly as bizarre or xenophobic as Europe’s "far Right."

American conservatism has nothing to do with Europe's so-called right. American conservatism is rooted in the same classic liberalism that the country was founded upon, combined with a belief in "american exceptionalism" that is rooted in religious faith, even forming a kind of secular religion for the more secular minded. There is nothing xenophobic about it, and at least the latter would have been shared by both parties until fairly recently.

The Republican presidential candidate that year, Senator Barry Goldwater, one of only eight Republican senators to have voted against that measure, lost the presidential election but sowed seeds of the right-wing revolution.

As he points out, Goldwater was one of the few to vote against the Civil Rights law. All major civil rights laws since the civil war have been passed by Republicans, and this one was no different. The controversy among Republicans was not whether Jim Crow was bad, the question was how to kill it without violating the Constitution, and that was the source of the disagreement.

Jim Crow was a Democrat phenomenon.

In fact, American politics remained quite moderate through the 1970s and 1980s. Until 1994, Congress was mostly controlled by Democrats and still harbored a number of liberal Republicans... Like the rest of America, Kansas remained basically middle-of-road through the 1980s.

No bias here. A Democrat controlled government is "middle of the road". A government controlled, as the writer says, by "a gaggle of anti-war protesters, feminists, environmentalists, and claimants to government benefits" is moderate. A congress with a razor-thin Republican majority, not even a conservative majority, which continues every one of the DNC's pet programs is to him a "right-wing backlash".

Bush has not ended any government program. He has, in fact, extended government entitlements in an effort to position himself at the center; a right-winger he is not. The only thing he has done is to speak respectfully of religious faith, and go after our enemies, two things that until a couple of decades ago might have resonated with people of both parties. It is the DNC that has abandoned the center.

[counterpunch]

Oh my, I missed this part:

And, by the way, Gore won.
Robert Reich is a Prospect co-founder.

It was written by Robert "Marx" Reich. And just to show how off-the-cliff delusional he is, he throws in at the end that Gore really won.
That aside, he seems to be a much more skilled propagandist than economist.